Let Me Tell You A Story

Fact III

On August 27, 1964, Edmund Kemper's grandmother, Maude Matilda Hughey Kemper was sitting at the kitchen table.

Edmund and Maude got into an argument and Edmund stormed off and grabbed the hunting rifle his grandfather had given him. He returned to the kitchen and Maude told him not to shoot any birds. That's not what he was planning on doing.

He shot her in the head, and then he shot her two more times in the back. Maude Kemper additionally suffered multiple post-mortem stab wounds with a kitchen knife. He then dragged her body out of the kitchen and into her bedroom.

When Kemper's grandfather, Edmund Emil Kemper came home from grocery shopping, Kemper went outside and shot him in the driveway.

Then he called his mother and told her what he had done. She told him to call the police. After doing so, he waited to be taken into custody. When questioned by authorities, Kemper said that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma". And that he killed his grandfather so that he would not have to find out she was dead

He was only fifteen years old at the time of their murders and was subsequently diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He was sentenced to the Atascadero State Hospital as a criminally insane juvenile. Where he assisted in the creation of psychological tests and memorized the correct answers to at least fourteen different tests.

This allowed him to successfully pass any test as sane, healthy-minded, and well-adjusted. Kemper later revealed that being able to understand how these tests functioned allowed him to manipulate his psychiatrists. He also admitted that he learned a lot from the sex offenders to whom he administered tests. Like how it was best to kill a woman after raping her to avoid leaving witnesses.

Between May of 1972 and April of 1973, Kemper embarked on an 11-month murder spree. Starting with young women he picked up hitchhiking and ending with the murder of his own mother. Before killing his last victim, his mother's best friend who he'd invited over for dinner and a movie. 

Kemper waited all night in his room while his mother slept, and at 5.15 a.m., he got a hammer from the kitchen and went to his mother's bedroom. He struck her once, very hard, and then slit her throat. Then he beheaded her, and unsuccessfully tried to get rid of her larynx by putting it down the garbage disposal. He put her head on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour.

Threw darts at it.

And ultimately smashed it.

That afternoon he decided that if someone else were found dead with his mother, then suspicion might point away from him. So he told Sara Hallett, a friend of hers, that there was a surprise dinner for his mother and she was invited. When she arrived he strangled her, first manually, and then with the scarf he obtained from Aiko.

Then he removed Sara's clothes and put her on his bed, and had sex with her corpse. He put her corpse in the closet. And left a note to the police saying: Appx 5.15 A.M. Saturday. No need for her to suffer any more at the hands of this horrible "murderous Butcher". It was quick-asleep-the way I wanted it. Not sloppy and incomplete, gents. Just a "lack of time". I got things to do!!!

He drove nonstop to Pueblo, Colorado. After not hearing any news on the radio about the murders of his mother and Hallett, he found a phone booth and called the police. He confessed to the murders of his mother and Hallett. But the police did not take his claim seriously and told him to call back at a later time. Kemper called again several hours later asking to speak to an officer he knew personally, and confessed to killing his mother and Hallett.

Then he waited in his car for the police to arrive, arrest him, and take him into custody and he later confessed to killing six students. When asked what motivated him to turn himself in, Kemper said, "The original purpose was gone. It wasn't serving any physical or real or emotional purpose.".

Kemper asked for the death penalty, requesting "death by torture". Instead, he received seven years to life for each count, with these terms to be served concurrently. He was sentenced to the California Medical Facility. He voluntarily denied himself parole in July 2007, July 2012 and July 201. Each time he told the parole board that he was not fit to return to society.